The Construction 2050 Alliance held a meeting with a representative of the Cabinet of Commissioner Breton and discussed  the construction-related priorities for the Commission for 2021, the forthcoming new Industrial Policy and the role of construction in the recovery from the Covid pandemic.

The Renovation Wave, the Affordable Housing initiative, the revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings, the digital transition, the revision of the construction products Regulation, the Taxonomy for sustainable investments are only some of the issues on which we will need to focus this year.

One of the main roles of the Construction 2050 Alliance, which is made up of around 50 European organisations involved in the construction value chain, is to strengthen the visibility and the voice of our sector in the EU Institutions. Besides our regular contacts with the services of the Commission, in particular with the Construction Unit within DG GROW, such meetings are extremely important in order to build mutually helpful links with the key EU policy makers.
 

On 4th February, former German Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Andrea Nahles, now Special Advisor to Commissioner Schmit, presented her report on strengthening the EU social dialogue.
In this report, Ms Nahles highlights the main issues at stake and proposes a set of 10 recommendations and initiatives.
In particular, she promotes the creation of an "Erasmus" programme for young leaders of social partner organisations, in order to enhance the social dialogue culture across the EU. She also wants to promote social partners' agreements at EU level, and proposes that national registries for collective agreements are created at national level. 
In terms of funding opportunities, she insists that an appropriate amount of the European Social Fund (ESF+) resources should be earmarked under each programme for capacity building to benefit the social partners.
On an additional suggestion to assess whether to revise the European framework directive 2002/14/EC on workers’ involvement and information and consultation rights so as to include common minimum standards for European and national companies, to prevent misuse in the form of letter companies or chains of subcontractors, Commissioner Schmit reacted that this idea was not on the Commission's agenda for the time being.

Today the DigiPLACE Advisory Board meets for the last time, after a year of virtual meetings during the pandemic. The Advisory Board met once in person, in Milan, during the project's kick-off event in 2019.  All the meetings since have been held by video conference, to the disappointment of the people involved.  The Advisory Board is made up of construction companies, software companies, associations and others and is chaired by FIEC. The project will soon enter its final three months, having been extended due to the pandemic.  It was set up to create a Reference Architecture Framework for a digital platform at EU level for the construction industry. More information can be found on the link below.